Sound card upgrade?

I have had a Creative X-FI XtremeMusic for what seems like forever. It is noticeably better than on-board for the mic input if nothing else, and I haven't had any issues with it, other that the large amount of dust that has collected.

I'm building a new box this week, and haven't ordered a new sound card, but I'm wondering if I should? Creative have come out with numerous new models, and Asus' cards seem to have come to the fore.

I have a USB headamp (built-in DAC) for headphone use. What benefits would I get from an upgrade given desktop and some gaming use?

The quality of the sound ports (sound floor, S/N ratio, etc) varies a lot on motherboards, from pretty bad to quite good. A decent motherboard should be pretty much indistinguishable from a gaming sound card. Gaming audio standards don't really exist anymore. EAX died a long time ago, since it's now trivial to perform equivalent calculations using the CPU instead of dedicated sound processors.

The only reason you might need a sound card would be for specific output formats (optical, Dolby, etc) or multiple inputs for sound mixing.

Use the onboard sound digital output and put your money in to a cheap AVR and some nicer speakers. The AVR will have it's own headphone amp too. Top of the line sound cards are snake oil these days, things have come a long way since the 90's.

I have no space for a receiver and speakers unfortunately. I've already tested my receiver's (in the lounge, not the computer room) headphone output vs. my dedicated headamp, and the headamp wins comfortably.

I think calling them snakeoil is harsh. There are measurable differences between the cards, which is more than can be said for much in high-end audio.

Also, while I'm sure many of you are happy with on-board sound, I am not (at least not for the older Realtek solutions such as ALC889), but regardless, that's not why I started this thread. I wanted to compare my existing, but old sound card, against newer ones. Having established that gaming sound standards have not moved forward, and having looked at the RMAA results of newer cards vs. my current one, it seems that I should stick with what I have.

Sound quality varies greatly, and it really is a crap-shoot. The on-board sound on my Gigabyte 78LMT-USB3 board is noticeably better than the sound on my Asus SABERTOOH 990FX. One board was £35, the other was nearly £200...

I see some of the Haswell boards from MSI and ASUS have "better" sound chips, MSI I think use the new Realtek chip, and Asus have one with Creative.

It's a gamble since a lot of the time it is fully dependent on software. There is not much point in anything but HDMI output from a computer these days so that eliminates a lot of the special features on high end cards (special output stage filters, DACs, whatever). Personally, I don't think the differences you will find in most gear to be significant enough to notice unless something is seriously messed up. If your receiver's headphone output is worse than the USB headphone output, that probably just means the receiver headphone output is either poor, or the USB device has stuff going on that you may not be doing on the receiver (loudness, BBE enhancement, whatever).

If your receiver's headphone output is worse than the USB headphone output, that probably just means the receiver headphone output is either poor, or the USB device has stuff going on that you may not be doing on the receiver (loudness, BBE enhancement, whatever).

Sound quality varies greatly, and it really is a crap-shoot. The on-board sound on my Gigabyte 78LMT-USB3 board is noticeably better than the sound on my Asus SABERTOOH 990FX. One board was £35, the other was nearly £200...

I see some of the Haswell boards from MSI and ASUS have "better" sound chips, MSI I think use the new Realtek chip, and Asus have one with Creative.

Indeed. I looked at some motherboards higher up that use the ALC1150 chip, which does seem to be an improvement. The problem is, as you say, it's not just the chip that counts. As I already had the sound card, I thought I'd just make use of it. The only other consideration I had, was that as a result of wanting to use the card, I had to get a mobo with a PCI slot. Otherwise I might well have gone with the Asus Gryphon instead of the Asus Z87-Plus I bought.

I use Creative's cards since AuzenTech is apparently dead and Asus's EAX interpretation is wonky. I need DDL support hence the card. Creative's moved to something called SoundCore. I'd say maybe try for a Gigabyte motherbard with it integrated, but both of my recent Gigabyte boards were unusable so... stand-alone Creative card is my vote!

If your receiver's headphone output is worse than the USB headphone output, that probably just means the receiver headphone output is either poor, or the USB device has stuff going on that you may not be doing on the receiver (loudness, BBE enhancement, whatever).

Headphone output on receivers is often pretty bad. No one buys a receiver for headphones, the jack is usually just whatever is built into chipset (see also, onboard audio).

Gigabyte's new Haswell boards still have 2xPCI, so the future's looking pretty bright.

Plenty of Asus and MSI boards have PCI as well. There's no reason to lower yourself to Gigabyte.

Interesting. I would rate Gigabyte above MSI, but am well aware that's based on my very limited sample of my last motherboard, plus reviews. I went Asus for a long time after being bitten by Abit, then for my last one I went Gigabyte (P55A-UD3R) which has been rock solid. Gone back to Asus for the new box, let's hope it works out. I fear I'm asking for trouble buying a board that hasn't even been available for a month yet.

A while ago I bought a little USB-powered (well, 5V DC, and a mini-USB power input) DAC with an optical and electrical SP/DIF input. It has two RCA jacks which I connect to whatever output device I feel like - headphone amp, receiver, whatever. As long as the on-board sound has a digital output (almost guaranteed these days) then the quality of the analogue stage is irrelevant to me. If you like your current card there's no reason not to keep it, but at some point when it can no-longer be carried forward (eg due to no more PCI slots, or lack of driver support), this is an approach I can highly recommend.

I am two for two with Gigabyte. G1 Sniper 3 and G1 Sniper 5. The 3 never worked right. The 5 managed to get into Windows and then BSoD'ed every time Steam ran. Asus Maximus V Extreme? No problems at all.

1. The motherboard I have has the PCI slots positioned so that if you have a dual width video card in either of the 16x slots, it covers one of the PCI slots. I failed to notice this when choosing the mobo, and I have two PCI cards, the X-Fi, and a wireless networking card. With my graphics card in place, I can only use one. I'm fine without wireless for now, but it could be an issue in the future.

2. The X-Fi driver for Windows 8 seems less than stable. It craps our during use, and sometimes doesn't start at all. The solution is to go into device manager, disable the card, then enable it again, but that's a pain in the ass

If you want to stay with Creative as an add-in, look on ebay for one of the PCI-e boards. I'm running an X-Fi HD PCI-e with some ridiculous list price ($180, I think) that I got a year ago for $40 off of ebay, and there were plenty of others for sale as well. Can't check ebay at work, but I'd be surprised if there weren't still quite a few. Works very well in both W7 and W8, though I don't need the THX capabilities (it's driving a tube headphone amp.) Sounds great, and vastly superior to the onboard sound on this Asus sabertooth. Not sure why the Asus is so bad... on paper it should sound indistinguishable from the Creative, but it's got a lot of noise, and not subtle noise either. I have a feeling the jacks are bad on my copy.

I've seen many references to the fact that the Extreme Music isn't a 'real X-fi', though I don't know exactly what that means. It's always used slightly different drivers, so that may be part of your issue.

I've seen many references to the fact that the Extreme Music isn't a 'real X-fi', though I don't know exactly what that means. It's always used slightly different drivers, so that may be part of your issue.

I think that's the X-Fi Xtreme Audio. I'm pretty sure the Xtreme Music is a "real X-fi".

Sounds great, and vastly superior to the onboard sound on this Asus sabertooth. Not sure why the Asus is so bad... on paper it should sound indistinguishable from the Creative, but it's got a lot of noise, and not subtle noise either. I have a feeling the jacks are bad on my copy.

As I said above, the sound on my SABERTOOTH 990FX is woeful, too. I don't think you got a bad one, I think they're all just bad.

I'm rebuilding my workstation in the next few days, and I'm sticking in an ancient old SB X-Fi (ex-Dell SB0460) to see if it's better than the SABERTOOTH's Realtek. It's a shame, the Asus is an awesome board in every other respect.

I've had like 14-5 motherboards in the past decade and honestly I haven't gotten a bad analog output out of the bunch.

The SNR seems fine with Windows volume at 100% - I usually feed it into my pre-amp. But the pre-amp can't magically create better sound, or remove a high sound floor. It's a Project 88 (here) setup so I can swap between headphones and speakers and also between the 2 machines I have. It's just a real simple 3x3 setup. Now I'm not talking about recording or anything fancy, just plain jane Stereo output - 1/8" <-> 1/4" cables.

I have captured some SNR using my Digi 003, HDX PCIe, or Onyx 1620i interfaces and honestly all was fine.

I've had like 14-5 motherboards in the past decade and honestly I haven't gotten a bad analog output out of the bunch.

Like HellDiver, I have. My Asus P8P67 Pro (both front panel and rear panel jacks) picks up noise from the power supply or videocard that changes in pitch depending on the complexity of the 3D scene on screen. I solved this with a USB DAC/headphone amp.

I had a XtremeMusic for the longest time too, but grabbed a Xonar DSX when my new motherboard had the PCI slot in a rather inconvenient place for me and I wasn't satisfied with my on-board sound. The DSX sounds about the same if not a little better than the XtremeMusic did in Audio Creation Mode, and the drivers have been just fine under Windows Vista and Windows 8. For the price ($50-$60), it's hard to beat it! Note that I haven't used any multi-channel output or the digital out; I've got an older Kenwood analog amp hooked up to some bookshelf speakers and a subwoofer for my gaming rig.

A bit OT, but ... I am a little bit fed up with seeing this statement repeated here. My work laptop (Lenovo X220) puts out a faint high-pitched whine which varies as I move objects around on my display, etc., exactly like the Toshiba I had a few years ago; admittedly it takes some pretty fancy headphones to hear it clearly. And yes, my colleagues’ laptops (all the same model) do the same.

While the DAC part of onboard sound is now very mature and should be a “solved problem”, the quality of the analog part between the DAC and the amplified output at the headphone socket can vary widely.

I would say "almost all motherboard makers", not just Asus. My CUSL2-C from back in the day was fine, but two examples are not data.

That said, yes, the vast, vast majority of systems sold today have onboard sound only, and most aren't complaining about it... so maybe it's both, users don't care and they can't tell the difference anyway.

It is good to see higher-end Realtek ALC1150's on some of the higher-end Z87 boards...

I was looking at one of the newer 200 dollar creative z sound cards because I would need it as an interface for my DAW. Unfortunately, even though they have "burr brown" DACs, recording is limited to 24/96, which is much less than their discontinued EM-U 1212m cards.

WTF creative? I don't want to spend $1000 in the audio industry for something I can get in the computer industry for $149 10 years ago.

That said, yes, the vast, vast majority of systems sold today have onboard sound only, and most aren't complaining about it... so maybe it's both, users don't care and they can't tell the difference anyway.

Most users seem to have their computers plugged in to $100 7.1 systems, or $10 2.0 speakers, or shitty headphones.

My Sabertooth sounds fine through cheap Logitech headphones - plug in a set of Beyer DT770 Pro headphones and you suddenly realise how crap the Logitechs and the audio jack is.

How could the on board sound NOT be bad, when you think of it? The audio jack is millimeters away from the power regulation for the CPU - there's a lot of noisy, beefy power stuff going on on a 990FX board when it's running a FX8320 at 4.5GHz.

A bit OT, but ... I am a little bit fed up with seeing this statement repeated here. My work laptop (Lenovo X220) puts out a faint high-pitched whine which varies as I move objects around on my display, etc., exactly like the Toshiba I had a few years ago; admittedly it takes some pretty fancy headphones to hear it clearly. And yes, my colleagues’ laptops (all the same model) do the same.

Interesting, I also have a X220, but I can't say I've noticed this specifically. I'll see if I can reproduce this tonight at home. Is this on battery or AC, and do you have the TN or IPS screen? (I hope your work wasn't so cheap as to get the TN screens when the IPS was only a $50 upgrade.) When you say "pretty fancy headphones", how high end are you talking? Good cans (equivalent to my AHT-M50s), high end cans (Sennheiser HD 650 and similar), or "my butler puts my pants on me" cans (Audeze or the like)?

That said, yes, the vast, vast majority of systems sold today have onboard sound only, and most aren't complaining about it... so maybe it's both, users don't care and they can't tell the difference anyway.

Most users seem to have their computers plugged in to $100 7.1 systems, or $10 2.0 speakers, or shitty headphones.

My Sabertooth sounds fine through cheap Logitech headphones - plug in a set of Beyer DT770 Pro headphones and you suddenly realise how crap the Logitechs and the audio jack is.

For me, the crap sound required two things at once to notice: replacing my falling apart Sennheiser PC-350 headset with Audio Technica ATH-M50s, and 3D games with a nearly silent background (no music, little environmental sound). It pretty much went from "sounds OK" to "WTF is that loud whining sound?"

My Asus Z77 Sabertooth has hiss and "snap, crackle and pop" (haven't seen those ads in ages) that requires only that one be not deaf to hear it. Whether the phones are $5 or $500 is irrelevant... it's that bad. And because I *am* putting the sound through a fairly good tube amp and into Senn 598s, the hiss and crackle comes through in amazing, jaw-clenching fidelity. That's why I was assuming I have bad jacks... it's amazingly bad. Though to be honest I've heard almost as bad through some Dell D630s that we had deployed at work.

The Creative Titanium HD might be overkill, but hell it was cheap, so why not? $40 well spent as far as I'm concerned. It's been stable and sounds great.